Beyond Labels: What Comes Next?

Beyond Labels

The invention of the
label “minimalism” (and some other nastier labels) and
the most vitriolic reactions to it came mostly not from conservative
evangelicals but from archaeologists. For it seems that rather than a
“minimalist-maximalist” debate we now had a confrontation
between two “archaeologies,” one following the theory and
practice of the discipline as generally acknowledged elsewhere, the
other continuing the established agenda practice of biblical
archaeology—defending the Bible.

By Emeritus Professor Philip Davies
University of Sheffield, England
April 2010

Megan Bishop Moore’s essay on the
“minimalist-maximalist” debate revealed what lies beyond
these facile labels in suggesting that biblical historicity, on which
the debate has turned, is a less important issue than the role of the
biblical stories in modern discourse about the past. But this wider
issue always played an unconscious or semi-conscious role in the
debate over historicity. For how else can we explain the
extraordinary over-reaction to suggestions that the past narrated in
the Hebrew Bible is largely fictional?

For “historicity” really is
a non-issue. It has been accepted for decades that the Bible is not
in principle either historically reliable or unreliable, but
both: it contains both memories of real events and also fictions. But
because most of the Bible’s contents are beyond reasonable
verification or falsification, the assessment of probability in
individual cases is, if not futile, then at least only calculable in
a very general measure. In other words, historians of ancient Israel
and Judah—who hate to see black holes in the past—have to
bear in mind the relative quantity of material in the Bible that
reflects historical reality (as we can determine it) and adopt the
appropriate degree of a priori doubt or confidence regarding
biblical historicity in general and thus probability in individual
cases. Such calculations have changed dramatically in recent years,
since the majority of biblical historians now accept that the story
of Israel’s origins in Genesis–Joshua is not
history (and that includes even the twelve-tribe “nation”
called “Israel,” as distinct from the kingdom of that
name).

This situation—if partially
anticipated by earlier critical studies on the patriarchal and
conquest “traditions”—arose directly from the work
of Israeli archaeologists from 1968 onwards which identified the
prehistory of Judah and Israel in Iron age hill-farming populations,
contradicting the biblical stories. The so-called “minimalists”
did not invent the data or the conclusions, but rather took the
obvious step of asking what the implied fictionality of these stories
meant for understanding how, why, and when they were created. But the
invention of the label “minimalism” (and some other
nastier labels) and the most vitriolic reactions to it came mostly
not from conservative evangelicals but from archaeologists. For it
seems that rather than a “minimalist-maximalist” debate
we now had a confrontation between two “archaeologies,”
one following the theory and practice of the discipline as generally
acknowledged elsewhere, the other continuing the established agenda
practice of biblical archaeology—defending the Bible. Some
practitioners were apparently confused enough to do both—decry
“minimalism,” accept a high degree of biblical
non-historicity and yet still “defend the Bible.” Both
Dever and Cline, for example, still entertain their audiences by
“illuminating” the Bible with a (decreasing) bill of
“correspondences” with “history.”1
But this theme is pointless and irrelevant: there is nothing in
principle to be proved or disproved, and there never was, once
fundamentalism lost control of biblical history (fifty years later in
America than in Europe). Only a few archaeologists have realized that
the contribution of archaeology to understanding biblical narrative
is to illuminate the time in which they were written, whenever that
was (notably Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman). And while
Finkelstein denies being a “minimalist,” he follows
exactly their agenda of looking for the historically realistic
contexts of what are accepted as fictions. The context itself,
whether Josianic or Persian, makes no difference to the principle.
Apart from the well-funded (and fundamentalist) “biblical
archaeologists,” we are in fact nearly all “minimalists”
now. There remain vigorous debates about the historicity of David and
Solomon, but opinions range over a spectrum and there is little or no
disagreement about how to go about answering the question. The real
distinction is between those who are willing to accept the label and
those who aren’t. So why not abolish both the label and the
distinction—and the ridiculous posturing that goes with it—and
get on with the common task of making sense of the archaeological and
biblical data?

Moore’s essay highlights why we
cannot yet do this. It is because historicity is not the real issue,
but only a smokescreen. Underneath its cover lies a relationship to
the Bible that, while it often has a clear religious component, is
also more broadly cultural. It was personified in Albright’s
sincere belief in not just the factuality but also the moral
superiority of the Bible and this in turn is embedded in that
affection for Israel, both ancient and modern, that characterizes so
much of American culture. Biblical history and biblical ethics are
also, according to the enemies of “minimalism,” American,
and any attack on either of these is an attack on the USA.

Exaggeration? Well, read this:

“If its professional custodians
no longer take the Bible seriously, at least as the foundation of our
Western cultural tradition, much less a basis for private and public
morality, where does that leave us? If we simply jettison the Bible
as so much excess baggage in the brave new postmodern world, what
shall we put in its place?”2

Never mind the hyperbole. Here speaks
someone (a self-confessed agnostic, by the way) whose universe is
predicated on biblical values (read “the American way of
life”). Of all the “minimalists,” it was Keith
Whitelam who suffered the most vicious attacks (including accusations
of anti-Semitism) because he undermined and attacked a foundation of
the biblical culture: he suggested that our modern discourse about
ancient Palestine, in effect our modern cultural memory of its
past—was skewed, and that this impinged on attitudes towards
modern Palestine. What he actually argued was entirely reasonable,
that the history of Palestine was not competently addressed by
scholars specializing in the canonized memories (inevitably partisan)
of ancient Judeans (these are my words, not his). But of course
Palestine’s past is dominated by Israel in Western discourse,
and of course it focuses on only a small part of Palestine and
only a small part of its history. That fact may have a very good
reason, but little intelligent reflection is needed to see that
rewriting this ancient memory as a modern critical history or, worse,
as a perception of the modern identity of Palestine, has political as
well as methodological dangers. I note, for example, the increasing
use of the term “Land of Israel” in scholarly books and
articles to refer to Palestine. I know this translates the modern
Hebrew erets israel, but the term is not an accurate
historical description of anything. There never was a real
“Land of Israel,” only an imaginary one, drawn from a few
biblical chapters of the Bible and then redefined by the rabbis as a
place, essentially, of memory.To refer to the “land of
Israel” in this way is just one of the many respects in which
biblical scholarship is drawn into contemporary politics.

But something else needs to be clear.
To acknowledge as imaginary the “Land of Israel” and many
of the stories set in it does not mean that the Bible is “jettisoned
… as so much excess baggage.” Nor is it (an absurd
slander) “anti-Semitic.” Not even anti-American! In the
concluding section of a recent volume on archaeology and history,3
Israel Finkelstein and Amihai Mazar agree on precisely this: the
biblical stories and their identity-forming power are more important
to modern Israel’s identity than any reconstructed history.

The power of such
stories can be both good and bad. Stories are essential to our own
identity-formation, personal, corporate, social. They define us,
distinguish us and motivate us: they can shape the contours of our
future. What is Judaism without its stories of the past—or
Christianity? But these stories, however essential to our own
cultural identity (“our Western cultural tradition”)
should not be mistaken for fact. Biblical historians are not
the “professional custodians” of the Bible, but
professional custodians of the past—and
it is our responsibility to reconstruct the past in ways that conform
to our knowledge. This responsibility does not conflict with an
appreciation of the biblical stories. In fact, it makes for a better
appreciation of what they really mean. The task of the twenty-first
century is to find ways of believing in stories about the past
without believing they are true. Only in that way will
multi-cultural, multi-identity and so multi-storied societies live
harmoniously with each other. It’s actually not such a
difficult accomplishment: it’s what many non-religious
believers (and indeed many religious believers as well) already do
when they recollect the stories of Pesah and Christmas. William Dever
also wrote, “There can be none of what I have called ‘nostalgia
for a biblical past that never existed’”4—a
statement that goes well beyond what I personally feel. I have an
enormous amount of nostalgia for the biblical stories. I can happily
enter their world and yet I would like some of them to have been
true, I do not believe they are history and I would not insist that
anyone else should.

But Moore is right: if the ignorance
and unsophistication of the enemies of “minimalism” are
anything to go by, even this simple truth is going to be contested.

Notes:

1
Eric H. Cline, Biblical
Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction,
Oxford University Press, 2009. Incidentally, his claim that the Tel
Dan inscription proves David to have existed (p. 60) goes beyond
what even most Israeli archaeologists suggest and likewise his
assumption that the “united monarchy” is a historical
fact. He still seems not really interested in the Bible except as a
record of historical facts.

2
William G. Dever,What
Did The Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001, p. 3